A blog in reviewal of all those good times had as a child in front of a glowing screen. Whether it be an old Mac, an old PC, Nintendo, or Sega...all brands, genres and skill-levels will be covered in detail. Were you a fan of NBA Jam? How about The Secret of Monkey Island? Or were you more of a Power Pete kind-of-guy?
No matter what your platform, this blog is for you.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

A Bit of Domination: RAMPAGE

HOW MANY BITS, MERCER? 5/8 Bits

This game has been on almost every console ever. It started out as an Arcade Game back in '86, and has been consistently kicking ass

ever since. The first time I ever experienced it was for Atari, but for those of you who aren't as hardcore as I am, maybe you played it on N64, Gameboy (Color, and otherwise), Playstation, or Playstation 2.

The premise, however, on all platforms is thankfully the same, so you're not missing out on too much if you didn't play the original.

The player gets to choose between a giant Godzilla type creature (Lizzy), a giant Werewolf (Ralph), or King-Kong (George). I mean, after even after reading just that, don't you want to play it? I know my fingers are even getting tingly at the thought.

The point of this game is to demolish absolutely everything. You eat people, you crush taxis, you blow up trucks, punch out buildings. As the game has progressed through the gaming platforms, so have the options. I think that one of the options in the newer on (N64, Maybe?) was to eat certain people, and get extra powers. When you ate prostitutes you vomited, just a little fun fact.

Unfortunately, the chaos cannot continue forever, and the player can receive damage from shells, bullets, grenades, and falling. After several falls, or shots, the monster reverts back into its human self, and shuffles off of the screen with it's various sexy parts covered. I'm pretty sure my favorite part about all this is that if you were playing together with someone, the person still in Monster form could eat you. I remember this really pissed my little cousin off, because he'd always try to get that free play in, and then I'd kick his butt, and eat him. I'm not a very courteous gamer when it comes down to it.

Anyway, I always chose Lizzie, because she was the only girl. She really wasn't fun to play, because she could only hold men, and eat men for more power (an interesting dichotomy to add to children's game, if you ask me). Obviously there were more women than men, women are better to make scream and play around with if you are a gigantic monster!

The game coasts across the United States, and some of Canada hitting up 128 different towns including L.A., and Peoria. When you really think about it, 128 different towns for this level of game play, and platform usage is really pretty impressive. I don't think I ever managed to beat this game. 128 levels of ass-kicking was just too intense for my Five-year-old self, apparently.